The decision to decriminalize 2.5 grams of hard drugs for personal use, starting next January, is an insufficient response to the epidemic of toxic drug deaths and overdoses that is still killing more people in B.C. than COVID-19.
What B.C. needs is prescribed safer supply, across the whole province.
Maple Ridge has had a shocking 15 deaths so far this year up to the end of April, putting the city on track to replicating its all-time-worst 45 deaths per year the city saw in 2021.
A decade ago, five to 10 deaths per year were the norm in Maple Ridge.
The only solution to this problem is for the government to step in and provide a regulated, tested safe supply for addicts. In combination with safer consumption sites, drug purity testing, decriminalization, and initiatives such as the Assertive Community Treatment teams, we might actually be able to cut the toll of deaths.
We have already tried virtually everything else. Enforcement and education can only go so far.
For years, police have given up on targeting drug users for personal possession.
They’re rightly focused on the mid- to high-level dealers murdering one another on our streets.
The gangs are the ones profiting from the drug trade, the users are being victimized by it.
Until the government really internalizes the idea that this is a health crisis first and a criminal problem second, we aren’t going to make progress on ending the lethal epidemic.
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